Back in our study about Christ, basically this study of Christology, Jesus and His work. Last week I think we finished Article 4 on page 7, if I remember right. stuff to talk about and what's really kind of a small statement where we have in this document at least the introduction of the term the hypostatic union, which is the combining of the two natures of Christ. The next couple of articles roll out of this. And so, when we talk about the two natures of Christ, we're talking about His divine nature and His human nature. He is 100% God. fully, truly God in every way, and 100% man after His incarnation. He becomes a man in every way just like we are. And the statement here just general about the hypostatic union brings up a few things that come out of the old creeds that He is one Person with two natures united without mixture, confusion, division, or separation. So it's not literally that Jesus is two persons, each person with a nature. He's one person with two natures. This is totally unique. in any realm anywhere. It's not just the physical world, but the spiritual too. There's not a division between the two natures in a way that they're separate in person, but they're combined into one person. But they're not mixed. It's not like a swirling together of two things. And so when Jesus is incarnate, he becomes a man. It's not like some aspects of human nature are mixed in with the divine, and you end up with a hybrid. Jesus isn't a hybrid. He's a union of two different natures. And so there's not really any confusion. And this starts to help. And we were trying to talk about this last week. We'll see it in some other stuff today. Especially when we're watching Jesus and reading about Him in the Gospels, and watching Him do things, He's primarily operating as a man. And it begins from the beginning, right? He's born, he's born as a baby, he's born to a woman who's his mother. She appears to give normal birth to him as far as we know. He's a little kid who doesn't know anything and grows in stature and in wisdom. He learns to talk, learns to walk, like in every way he's a human. And as he goes on, he operates that way. Most of his ministry is operated that way. See it in things like when Jesus goes and prays, why is Jesus praying? Who's he praying to? Jesus is always saying, I'm praying to the Father, but he's not operating there as God the Son, he's operating as a man, reliant on God for almost everything. I don't remember if it was during the class or just after the class, probably talking to Andrew I think, but most of the things that he's doing that are supernatural, in His ministry, there's a discussion to be had. Not that we can come to the bottom of it. But most of the time when Jesus is performing miracles, He says in certain places that He's doing that stuff by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is the same way that we would do something. Remember when Jesus took the disciples and there were 70, 72 of them? He sent them out in pairs to go do stuff. What were they going and doing? They were preaching. What else were they doing? healing, casting out demons, right? They were doing the supernatural stuff. Were they doing that by the power of their God nature, their divine nature? The other 72 or the 12, take your pick. whenever He sent the disciples to go do these things, they're doing supernatural things, but they must be doing it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, Jesus seems to be operating the same way. And so, for us, we're not perfectly clear all the time about which nature He's operating in, but He's not confused. And there's evidently some specific reasons why He did stuff like that. Anyway, before we look at moving on to the next section, I kind of wanted to relay just a little bit of that because it is the basis we're moving into the next articles about. Are there other thoughts or questions or things that you thought about last week and didn't ask or have thought about since? Bring up anything? Alright. Article 5 then. Article 5, middle of the top of the page here on page 7. Article 5 affirms this first. It says, we affirm that in the incarnation of Jesus, His divine and human natures retain their own attributes. We affirm that the attributes of both natures belong to the one person, Jesus Christ. the denial of the denial is that we deny that the human nature of jesus has divine attributes or can contain the divine nature we deny that the divine nature communicates divine attributes to the human nature we deny that the sun has laid aside or gave up any of his divine attributes in the incarnation i've said this before i think that all of the denial statements most of them are directly addressing a particular heresy that they don't name or label necessarily. But in trying to understand this two natures of Jesus stuff, there are those who have said, well, you know, two doesn't equal one, the same as the Trinity can't be three equals one, right? But these two natures in one person, there's got to be some way that God has to be a part of the human nature somehow. Somehow, for Jesus to do the things that He did, to talk the way that He talked, to know the things that He knew, to have the power that He had, He has to have received something of God's divine power. Instead of saying what we say and what the statement says, that Jesus is incarnate and he's got the divine nature and the human nature and each retains its own attributes. They're not diminished, right? But Jesus can operate in one or the other of these natures. It's almost like there's a switch that he flips. And one thing becomes active and the other one becomes, I don't know, inactive. The problem with describing all of this is, you know, there's limitations in our language and our understanding, and trying to make some sort of an analogy out of this is not, isn't going to be fully satisfactory. And I don't want to, even as we try to do that, to try to understand, we want to recognize that there's limitations in what we're trying to explain. I think about this a little bit. Years ago when I was working, there was like six months when I worked for two different companies at the same time, and I had two different computers on my desk. They were big old desktop ones, so they were under my desk, but I literally had a switch that I could turn, and it would go this computer when I'm working for this company, and then I'd turn the switch, and this computer when I'm working for that company. You know, because the companies were both owned by the same guys, and I had the same office, the same chair, the same desk, but two different things, and the switch I could literally flip. And so Jesus seems to have something way better than that, but maybe somewhat similar by an analogy. But it's not in the denials, right? It's not that His divine nature communicates some of His divine attributes to His human nature. So when Jesus is doing miraculous things, He's either operating as God, who does whatever he wants, however he wants, because he has all power and all knowledge, or he's operating as a man who's being filled by the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who's a different person than God the Son, and he's operating in that power. Which is, like I said, how do the apostles perform all of these miraculous things? The same stuff Jesus was doing. It's got to be this. Because it's not that when Peter does some miraculous thing, or healing, or Paul, or any of these guys, that God is communicating, transferring some of His attributes to Peter. It's not that. He's doing it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, that just makes it sound a little bit, I don't know, like He's fully God in His nature. I mean in a sense, right, right? I mean, it is fully God, but not the God, the Father God, because it seems like that's where there's no sin around, like it would be burned up. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, kind of. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, it's something to try to think through about that. We know a few verses about the sin can't exist in the presence of God, but then right here in this room, Is God present here? In what form? Which of the persons? Can one be one place without the other two persons of the Trinity? And I mean, we believe that He's here in a way, in a presence with us, but I'm a sinner. You're not anymore. Yeah, not all of you guys are sinners, I think. I'm here, so that's close enough. But there's some way that Jesus is able to operate that way and not only be in the presence, but touch, interact with, raise people, all this stuff. He's surrounded by these sinners. It's not like He's only with the guys who got converted. He's with the Pharisees. He's with the prostitutes and tax collectors who may currently be involved in their nefarious activities. But in that way, He's a man operating in the created world that's under the curse of sin. And here He is, right? But yet, He never really became less than God. I think that's the point of the last statement in the denial statement. It says, we deny that the Son laid aside or gave up any of His divine attributes in the Incarnation. And this is something that's somewhat... This isn't in the verses, but I wanted to look at it for a second. Remember in Philippians 2, when Paul is describing Christ. Look at this in Philippians 2. Grab your Bible if you don't have it already. But in v. 6, he starts describing the humiliation of Christ, the incarnation. Right? He was in the form of God, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. Some have taken this and he emptied himself. What does that mean? What does it mean that he was in the form of God and then he emptied himself? He didn't count equality with God something to be grasped in the ESV. Ivan, you got the NAV? How's it read? He humbled himself. He humbled himself. He brought himself down. Does the LSB say something different? Humble himself. So, he humbled himself. He emptied himself. What does that mean? Some look at this and say, well, that has to mean that he was in the form of God, and therefore when he humbles himself or empties himself, he is divesting himself of his God nature because he was only in the form of God, and now he becomes a man. And later when he's ascended, he reassumes that. And so it's taking off one thing and putting on another. You can kind of see how trying to understand these verses, how you might come to that kind of conclusion. Because how is it that God could ever humiliate Himself, become humble? It kind of sounds like Jesus left it behind. He divested himself of his God nature. He emptied himself. Or in the phrase of that denial in Article 5, he gave up or laid aside his divine attributes. Is that what that means? Now, the understanding of this passage has to come from elsewhere because Paul doesn't directly answer that question in this passage, right? He doesn't exactly say. If this is all we had, depending on how you translate it, you could kind of see how he laid aside his what? What did he lay aside? We would say, what would we say? Caleb? Oh, sorry, you were going to ask a question? Yeah. Okay, MacArthur says in the study Bible notes that he laid aside certain privileges of being God. There was a mouthful. Say it louder real quick. He lists a few things he lays aside. It's heavenly glory, independent authority, divine prerogatives, eternal riches, and a favorable relationship with God, specifically on the cross. Divine prerogative? What else? Independent authority. Independent authority. Independent authority. That means he did all of his miracles not by his own will. Right. I think he says that right. Well, that goes against this. It does? The idea that, I'm just questioning, Yeah. Nothing. Why are these guys so insistent on denying this? Because, look, Moses did all these miracles because God told him what he was going to do and what he was going to have in the future. So, why couldn't Jesus automatically, I mean, one of the things he was going to have in the Bible is audible voices from God. It's not as if he heard them. And men don't do anything like this. What's wrong with you? Why do these guys want to deny this? I think that, in my thought, I wouldn't deny that. It's possible that Jesus could have surrendered all use of His divine everything, so that He's operating 100% of the time as a man, always. Right? And so every time he needs to know something, he goes and prays and the Father tells him. He's receiving things by divine revelation, power, wisdom, knowledge, all of it's coming from outside of him. He's always operating that way. And I don't think that there's a strict, like, a statement in the New Testament that says that that wasn't the case, right? That there was a switch and he's going back and forth. There's nothing wrong with saying that there's not a switch. He switched it when he's born and he switches it back later or something, right? They're super dogmatic about this. Not that he is operating as a man but maintains all of his divine characteristics. The denial is, the heretical statement is that Jesus became in substance not God. He surrendered His divine nature. Not the use of it, but He surrendered His divine nature, divested Himself of His divinity. So He quit being God for a while. And there is kind of a problem with that. Right? I think the Scripture teaches us that it didn't really happen. But in order to try to understand and to get away from the switch thing, or to get away from saying, yeah, he's operating 100% of the time as a man, but he never surrendered his divine characteristics. I don't know why the heretics aren't okay with either of those. Right. Yeah, it ends up depending on how, what you mean by, what do you mean by he laid them aside? Like he surrendered the use of them, or do you mean that he, he, he took, he took them off, like he removed them, right? There's, there's, Trying to think of a... As an example, submission to the Father, where several times in the Gospels he says stuff like, no one knows the day or the hour except the Father, and I don't know. And then in John 5.30, Jesus says, I can do nothing on my own initiative as I hear I judge, and my judgment is just because I do not seek my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And part of it is that, that submission to the Father in the Gospels. Right. Of course. Yeah, it's not that he doesn't give up or he doesn't. What does he give up? I guess there's a fine line in my mind too about there's a difference between laying aside the attribute and laying aside the use of the attribute. Which is it? Does he actually lay aside his omniscience as if he never could have picked it back up and run with it, you know? He didn't like... How do you describe that? Right. Right. Right. I think the heresy part of that one would be not that he decides not to turn the rocks into bread, but he's unable to turn the stone into bread because he's surrendered his divine power. He still has it. It wouldn't be a temptation if he didn't have it, really. If he would have done that, he would have been sinning by giving in to the temptation of the devil, right? But could he have done it? It's a very, like it gets real blurry, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This statement, I understand, is one that they make dogmatically because of the heretical stuff. They're responding to that, you know? But still, they could word it differently, and they kind of say it, I guess, in the affirmation in some ways, right, that he maintains, retains all the attributes of both natures, but he doesn't really operate in those attributes the whole time. And I guess I said the switch thing, like he goes back and forth is one of the possibilities, but maybe there is no switch, and he's always operating as a man, he's always doing that. between His conception and His crucifixion, at least. He's always doing that. There's no reason to think that... There's things that are supernatural, but the Father and the Holy Spirit are interacting with Him in such a way. The angels come and help Him out with stuff. The same way any person who's only human could have that going on too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. None of us actually think that Moses parted the Red Sea. When you when you stop and think like, God put Moses as the leader to do the little sticky thing. And then the heat God's parting the Red Sea. Right? But it's sort of attributed to Moses as if he's this vessel through whom God does some stuff. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Jesus could be absolutely doing that. And based on his statements, like I always obey the Father, I never know the next thing, I'm always doing it in dependence and obedience, it's probably a better way of thinking about it than my silly switch idea. The real issue is that if he divests himself, I keep using that word because it's one I know theologically, but if he laid aside the attribute, if he gave up the power, not just he decided not to use it, but he gave up the power, then he has made himself less than God and there's issues that that creates with who he is. because there are certain attributes that we specifically assign to divinity that without those attributes, he's not God anymore, so he has to contain all those attributes because he's fully divine still. But at some level, he humiliated himself into self-renunciation, the power and the privileges of deity, but without giving up the responsibility. And I think it might be sort of like, each of the independent attributes, he kind of treats them slightly differently. Like, you can't really say the same thing about certain attributes as with others. Like, he's filled with perfect love and perfect obedience, but he doesn't have the full glory, or he doesn't, you know, avail himself. Right. Yeah, he definitely laid aside the glory, right? He even prays that way at the end. bringing me back to you so I can get back the glory I had with you before. But in Philippians 2 when he says it that he didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped. The very careful language about not that he no longer was equal to God, but he didn't hold on to it. He didn't grasp it. He didn't clutch it tightly as if that was necessary for him to whatever. He lets loose of it, and he doesn't use it, but it's still there. It's not that He's surrendered it, given it up, removed it from Himself. It's still there. And so, Jesus is operating this way, emptying Himself. Emptying Himself of glory. Emptying Himself of the use. Emptying Himself of all of these things. But any time He wanted to, there's every reason to believe that as God the Son, He could do whatever. And He says it a couple of times, right? He says it to Pilate about like, you know, you couldn't do anything to me if I actually use the power that's at my disposal, you know. I'd instantly call down 10,000 legions of angels and we'd have ourselves a little issue here. But Jesus doesn't operate that way. But could he have? And that's why I think maybe the statements there, not knowing their minds, but I think it's important to recognize He could have in order for Him to be able to, as He's living the righteous life, doing all the obedience, even as He's passively dying on the cross to pay for sins and all of those things, if He's not God, He can't really... that's not transferable to more than one person. He's got this eternity that he has, and the fact that he would humble himself in that way ends up for us being a tremendous example in a lot of things. I also feel like that's a key word. It's him humbling himself. It's his humility. It's not about giving up anything. It's the humility. He's in the garden and he prays to his Father. You know, Father, this cup can be taken away, but not my will, but Your will be done. Submission through humility like a man to be submissive. Yeah, he's submitting himself to all of that. And then just within hours, then he's, you know, telling these soldiers, like, don't you know that I could call upon my Father and have Him? So he doesn't say, don't you know that I can kill you? He says, I can call on my father, which says, I'm in a dependent state here. I'm not using any of my powers the whole time I'm here. My father will answer the prayer. So he's not going to be dependent. It's dependent, but it shows the depth of his knowledge. That's the point. I think he's capable of living as a man, like Moses. That's what I think. Anyway, that's what I thought. That's why everybody agrees with everything about this stuff. I still think that some of it really matters. If you're going to say that Jesus became less than God, He gave that up, which some heretics do, you can't have it be He's God and then He's not God. Those two things can't be true simultaneously. So one of you has to be a heretic, right? So the one who's wrong, I'll call them the heretic and say that what they say might be wrong. But it's not the normal thing at all, right? It's not the normal way that people think about it. Very few Christians these days dispute this way because this stuff was settled in creeds and conferences and has been taught to us since we were little kids as Christians. Yeah. Nothing? Okay. Well, we can at least look up a few Bible verses too. How's that? You guys want to do that? Yay. So, at the bottom, footnote number five, it says, the first verse they give us is from there in Philippians 2. We kind of have gone over this, but, "...have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." And so, the likeness of God and the likeness of men doesn't mean that He is similar to the form of God or the likeness of men. It's not similar to God, but is God. Not similar to man, is man. But on top of that, He's not counting equality with God, a thing He's holding on to. He's not considering it that way. But He doesn't necessarily remove all of His God qualities, God nature. He's going to operate in a way that is one and not the other of the nature. So, Matthew 9-10. So, I kind of started going through a little bit, and some of these, we're not necessarily going to look up all of the verses, so we're going to jump through them a little bit for the sake of repetition and time. But Matthew 9-10. Somebody want to look that up and read? Caleb? Ivan, will you find Matthew 16-16? And then we'll skip to John 11. Matthew, will you be ready for John 11? And then John 20, 28? Dina, you want to? OK. We'll go through those, and then we'll do some new assignments, because I'll forget. All right. Ivan? Sorry, Caleb. Ivan, you're next. Matthew 9, 10. It happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, people, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus at his table. I looked at this one like five times trying to figure out what is this even referring to? What's this pointing out to us? And this happens through some of these verses that they use as some of their proof text stuff. Like, this is Jesus operating as a man where He's fitting in with men and doing exactly what men do, and nobody in the room thought anything other than He's a man. It's just one of those simple everything that they do, He does, He's a man. They could have quoted some where He falls asleep in the boat because He sleeps. Right? Where He's eating stuff and different things. But Jesus is subject to all of these things that are human. And you see Him here interacting with other human beings like human beings do. That's kind of the point of the verse. Alright. Ivan. Is it 1616? So, how does Peter know that? He's super smart. Peter's this guy who's like really, really studious, right? He's a deep theologian, Peter. Yeah, well, there's something at that moment that Peter knows, and it's because of some of the miracles that Jesus was doing, right, just before that. Is this the one with the miracles? No, he's asking them, who does everybody say I am? So it's the culmination of all of this stuff, right? Who am I? You're the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Based on what? What Peter's seen, what he's heard, what he's experienced with him. He's recognizing there's something that he's not just a mere man. I've eaten with him at the tax collector's house, at Matthew's house, but there's something more. And when Peter says his confession is, you are, in the present tense, the Son of the Living God, Jesus doesn't correct him and say, no, no, I was and I will be again. Very important distinction. Because for Jesus to be true, He can't say to him, blessed are you, for flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven revealed this to you. This is the truth about who I am standing in front of you right now at this moment. If he's going to be honest, which Jesus always is, he would have to correct him. No, no, I divested myself of my God nature when I humiliated myself to be born as a man. And I'm only a man. He doesn't say that. Okay, and so Jesus, it's kind of an argument from the silence of the text, but it's not an invalid one. So, that's current at that moment. Make sense? We good? Okay. Oh, Matthew. John 11, 27 and 35. Does that work? She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. And at 35, Jesus left. You've just got to love this short verse. But in the same interaction here at the tomb of Lazarus, her confession is, you were the Son of God and someday you'll be the Son of God again. No, it is you are the son of God who's been predicted by the prophets to come into the world. You're God incarnate, basically is what she says. And again, Jesus doesn't correct her. He doesn't say, oh, no, no, that's not for me right now. But then just a few verses later, he does something that men regularly do in moments of sorrow. And it's not that God doesn't have any emotion and that God might not weep and, you know, we see it when it rains, right? That's God crying. No, that's superstition, no. But Jesus weeps. Jesus is concerned. He cares about these sisters. He cares about Lazarus. He does something here that is kind of demonstrably human when He weeps. So, we've got those in the same chapter there. In John 20, 28. Yeah, of course, this is after the resurrection, and so that becomes clear clearer than Thomas is, you know, infamously the doubting guy. What's he doubting? He's not sure about this. I'm not. I don't know if he's been raised from the dead or not, but he makes the same proclamation about Jesus that Peter did. Now, most wouldn't argue that Jesus is God here, but it's it's apparent. It's clear. Another simple proclamation. That's a few in the Gospels. There's a few other in Paul's letters. Good so far? Alright, who wants to start reading again in the first chapter of Romans? Take a volunteer there. Mikey, thanks. And somebody in Ephesians 1? Josh. And then Libby, would you read in Colossians? It's chapter 1 and chapter 2. There's a variety. I'll just make it hard for you. Hebrews 1.3, Matthew and 1 Peter 3.18 is the other one I want to look at. Sophia, thanks. Romans, was that you Mikey? No, thanks. It's repetitious, it says the same thing. concerning his Son who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So, we talked about this I think last week. Paul introducing the Romans here, just defining Jesus that according to the flesh, He's the Son of David, right? He has a human genealogy. that can be traced through his mom and, incidentally, through his stepdad. Jesus is born as a man, as one of the great, great, great, great grandsons of David. He's declared to be God, the Son of God, by the power of the resurrection. After the resurrection, that's the big miracle. Paul's less impressed by some of the other things that others of the apostles did. It's the resurrection that's the impressive one. That's the impressive demonstration of God's... the Father's proclamation that the Son is God. Nonetheless, we see it in the verses, both of these things at the same time. It's not one or the other. It's not one became the other. It's both. Fine? Romans 9 says something similar. We looked at that last week. So we'll just sort of skip over the repetitious verse and get to Ephesians chapter 1 verses 20 to 22. Judge. Yeah, thanks, Josh. This is the verse that God's working powerfully in Christ, raising Him from the dead, and seating Him at the right hand up in heaven, right? Now Jesus has all this rule and authority and power and dominion, a name above every name. It's not fully completed yet. It's still coming, the Kingdom. We're praying for the Kingdom still to come. It's on its way. But He's there. He's already set in that place. I think that the important thing that we recognize here is that God's involved in raising Christ from the dead. This is a big evidence about Jesus being human and He is not operating in His God nature when He dies on the cross. We really have multiple complicated problems if what we teach is that God died on the cross. That's not who died on the cross. God doesn't die. It's one of his essential attributes of his nature. So either Jesus is able to separate his two natures to such a degree that as a man he can die, and yet as God he's unaffected, or maybe, I suppose you could say, he gave up being God altogether. Not that he gave up the power or the use of the privileges, but he gave up being God. He's only a man. Like I said, we've got other issues with that, if that's what we have. And so, the fact that he dies is this big demonstration of him being human, having a human nature in every way just like we are. Able, capable of actually physically no longer having his spirit joined to his body, right? Dead, buried dead. Okay. Yeah? Yeah. We do say that Jesus Christ died and that Jesus Christ is God. And we also say that it's not that His soul is God and His body is human. No, not that. His body died and His soul was separated and His soul is God. His human body died and He evidently has a human soul that, I don't know, goes to Sheol or something. Well, that we also deny. I don't know. He went somewhere. He went to gather up all the Old Testament saints and bring them with him to glory or something. I mean, he's buried in the ground, right? His body's buried in the cave. Buried. The body's dead. Right. No, no, his soul's not tormented in hell. He doesn't go to purgatory to pay off his sins or something like that. We know that, because the place isn't even real. But what exactly happened during those days of mostly silence in the Scripture? I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, yeah, he went to somewhere to be in paradise, wherever that is, with the thief, right? Who also had a soul and a body, and they sort of, I don't know, did they go there together or something? Yeah, there. There you go. So he's got a spirit. He's committing himself into God's hands. In that way, it's no different than what happens when we die. He's exactly human. That's exactly what happens. Yeah. Right. The step we have to add is Jesus Christ is a man, which we also say. And so, is he the man-god who ceased to exist and was brought back into existence? Like, no. This is a physical death. Just the man part. Yeah. But yeah, we say those things and mean them all. And just because we can't quite figure out how they can both all be true at the same time doesn't mean that that's what's revealed to us. Yeah, they're not separate but distinct. They're different but the same. Back in 1986, I asked the great Dr. Beebe, I was a new Christian, I said, wow, what happened to the divine nature of Christ when he died on the cross? And he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What happened to his divine nature at that moment? And he said, now I'm asking you, Dr. Beebe, I'll tell you the answer to the game, but it didn't make any sense. It's one of those questions like, oh, you think you got it figured out? OK. Right. Right. Oh, you got this all figured out? Right. And it's not that we can explain it. We have to say things that seem contradictory, but are Yeah, the Bible just confirms to us that they're true, but I can't explain that. I don't know. Theologically, I would want to say that, like, his human spirit and his divine nature are still united somehow. But how can that be and then God forsakes him? Like, he's one person with two natures still at that time, it would seem, if the theology's right. What did Beaky say? I can't remember what it was yesterday. Yeah, yeah, what did he say? We're dying to know. He held him up. What does that mean? Okay. Well, if he said it, it must be true. Right. He doesn't want to quite say, I just, I can't, I don't know. Right. No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. I can try to pick a few things. There's got to be something, but it doesn't explain it in full. You know, what does happen? The cross is very, it's the mystery of the cross in some ways, I guess, but how's that work? Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, I'm not even sure what keeps my heart beating at the end of the day, so I try to figure this stuff out. Yes, well, I don't want to disappoint. You want to read some more there Libby? In Colossians 1, 16 and 17? For in Him all things are created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether for others or in Him alone or in His authority. For all things are created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things go together. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been fulfilled in Him, who is the head of all So these are the verses about the preeminence of Christ, right? He is the fullness of deity. Bodily dwells in Him. Colossians 2.9 is, in it all by itself, this mysterious verse about how the fullness of the deity dwells in the mortal body of Christ. What in the world does that mean? How can that even be true? God's all contained, but He's not. Not even a little bit. It's not like all of a sudden, because the divine natures are united with the human nature in Christ, that where He goes, that's the only place where God can be, and the other side of the world, God's not there or something. There's just all of these things that are implications that you try to take out of this. But what we see clearly is that everything is created by Him. All the fullness of God is pleased to dwell in Christ. And He's preeminent. the best, the top, the one of infinite value. Hebrews 1.3 says about the same thing. Amen. No, that's good enough. Thanks. Yeah, it's all the fullness of the deity in Christ. These are, in my opinion, probably the best two places about pointing. And I don't know why this is in our day. There's a lot of the cults close to Christianity, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and stuff, they always stumble on this one about Jesus is somehow Not God. Not the same. He's less. He's been deified. He's been all of these different heresies. But these just make it very clear. And so, you know, Jesus is God, the fullness of God, everything. Even when He's operating as a man, He's not less than God. He is still God, but He just doesn't operate that way. 1 Peter 3, 18, last one. See, the put to death in the flesh, made alive in the Spirit, there's kind of the two things. In the flesh, he's a man, he can die, he does die, right? And he doesn't just continue after that to exist spiritually, which is true, but his body is resurrected and they're reunited. his human spirit and his human flesh, and all the while maintaining the deity. So we can make those statements but not always explain them. That's all I guess. We got so far along here. Good? If there's more questions later, ask me and I'll tell you I don't know again. Lord, thank You for the morning together. Thank You for Your Word. In revealing these things to us, Lord, I just pray that You'd help us to what we can understand to understand and what we can't to accept and know that You are our God. You did these things in Christ for us. That Jesus the Son became a man on our behalf to come and to give His life as a ransom for us. so that we could be saved. Lord, I thank you that that simple truth doesn't require understanding all the ins and outs of every possible question about these things. But Lord, we thank you that you give us the opportunity, the time, and a little bit the desire, hopefully, to know you better as much as we can. Thank you for the discussion, the conversation, the questions, and everything today, Lord. I just pray you'd help us in light of these things and everything else that we know from you working in our lives that help us to worship you today. I pray that that would be our desire and what you'd enable us to do here together in Jesus' name. Amen.